


at home in the stars

by damnspacebois (Race_Jackson23)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Study, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Kinda?, Loneliness, Love Confessions, M/M, Mostly Fluff, Outer Space, Short & Sweet, Team as Family, True Love, Wishes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 19:11:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14625207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Race_Jackson23/pseuds/damnspacebois
Summary: Stars are what bring them together. They're also what tear them apart.alternatively: keith has issues and projects these onto the stars.





	at home in the stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is whacked. I have no idea what this is. It's softer than the summary indicates, though.

Stars bring them together. It makes sense, then, that under them is where they feel most at home.  

Dreams of distant planets and solar systems attract Shiro and Keith to the Garrison like moths to a flame, the promises of flying and exploration and _space_ alluring and seductive. Though the paths they take to get there are different, they both find themselves at the Garrison at the same time. They’re there for similar reasons too, and it’s what initially draws them to one another, a kind of recognition of kindred spirits that neither can explain: they want to reach for the stars.

Literally.

Out in space, everyday problems – _important_ problems, ones they and their families and friends have had to _struggle_ with – hardly seem to matter. It doesn’t matter whether rent can be made for the next week, or whether one can land a job. Keith losing his parents isn’t even a speck to that vast universe, not even a blip on the radar, and out there, the struggles Shiro’s mothers face are swallowed up by the nothingness. Out in space, those aren’t concerns.

The thought is appealing. It’s doubly so when it means that they could discover new peoples and places never dreamed of; that they could literally be writing history. And so both head off to the Garrison with stars in their hearts and brains, striving to push themselves to heights unbeknownst.

Then they meet, and together, they push themselves even further.

But it is the stars that brought them together, to that base in the desert, and it is stars that they feel most comfortable under. There’s a shack in that desert, ignored or unknown to the Garrison, that Shiro found sometime in his second year. Once he shows it to Keith, it is all they can do to stop themselves from escaping there every weekend. There, they bask in each other’s presence under the stars, getting drunk on cheap wine and laughing until their stomachs hurt and kissing until their lips are swollen from love.

The night Keith realises he is in love with Shiro is one such night. Their bottle of white is still half-full and that means that Shiro’s face has gone pink from it. Keith is sure he’s no better – he’s just as much of a light-weight as Shiro ~~is~~ was – but he delights in the flush dusting his boyfriend’s nose all the same as Shiro delights in pressing soft kisses to Keith’s forehead and rambling about constellations.

And then–

“Oh, a falling star!” Keith points, a hitch in his breath. It had been a favoured pastime of his to search out falling stars to wish on as a child, all too willing to hope for things far outside his reach. Though it had never succeeded, he couldn’t help it. “Make a wish, Shiro.”

For a moment, the lack of response makes Keith think that he’s fallen asleep. And then, it’s broken. Shiro shifts, gathering Keith up into his arms from the picnic blanket and holding him so close that his lips nearly touch Keith’s ear.

His voice is rough and gravelly and shoots right to Keith’s core.

"I don't need to wish upon a star. All I ever wanted is right here in front of me.”

In that moment, and on that night in a cold desert under the stars, Keith knew that he loved Takashi Shirogane. And it was all because of the stars.

~

As the stars brought them together, so too do they tear them apart. Shiro leaves for Kerberos and their lives are never the same.

Those stars, those all too alluring promises, turn to ash in the mouth. They’re nothing more than lies, half-baked plots with no rhyme or reason that entice and seduce the best people into the dark and unforgiving cold of space. They take Shiro away, and for that, Keith can never look upon them the same.

Of course, this doesn’t bode well when one is in a space program.

To no one’s surprise, Keith is booted from the Garrison after a particularly violent incident with that sack of shit Iverson. His only regret, as he flees to the shack where they were once so happy, is that he didn’t take out more of the man as he went. An eye, though, is enough in the light of day.

There at the shack, he learns to never look up; the stars, once his comfort, no longer. They remind him only of his loss, of the part of his soul that had gone into them to never return. Instead, he follows the pull _downwards_ , to canyons and caves that occupy space that had once been for the stars. There’s something there, he knows, like he had once known of space, and it too calls for him.

And then what was taken is returned, and Shiro is back – _he’s back, he’s alive, he’s alive_ – and all too quickly, Keith learns that the call from the earth is hardly from the earth at all. It is yet another hail from the stars – literally, he finds out, as Blue is the child of a comet like the ones he used to wish upon but so much more – and he doesn’t know what to think of that.

All he knows is that the stars tore him asunder. He also knows that they stitched him together.

~

Only it keeps happening. Again and again, Shiro is taken.

Again, he is returned.

All it causes is _pain_.

~

The stars are capricious and fickle, but Keith knows that now. They gave him Shiro, once, and took him away more times than he cares to think about, but the thing is: he comes back. He always comes back. That makes Keith hate the stars a little less.

Only a little. Shiro is, after all, one of the best things that have ever happened to him.

Another thing, though: Shiro isn’t the only thing the stars have given him.

They give him Voltron: the Red Lion, tumultuous but his; the Black, steady but Shiro’s. With Voltron (and who would have imagined it of a giant robot made from robot lions?) comes Allura and Coran, they who wander now, bereft of their home. Matt too, lured in once by the stars. His mother. Pidge, Hunk, Lance: those other parts of Keith’s whole, as annoying as they are vital to his very being. Even Lotor, as slimy as he could be.

The stars have brought him this. Perhaps it is silly to assign such a task to the billions of sparkling lights that dot the canvas of space, and Keith ponders this a lot, thinks himself sappy and stupid for doing so. But no matter what way he cuts it, if it weren’t for that calling to the vastness of space, he wouldn’t have what he did.

He wouldn’t have his family.

It’s what he asked for, all those years ago, when he made wishes on stars. What he’d hoped for when he let them guide him. It had been harder than he’d expected, but it worked and he would always be grateful to the stars for that, even as he despised them, even as he left them behind.

So when Allura announces some other celestial event they see arcing through space and explains that it grants wishes like a falling star, Keith knows better than to make a wish. Shiro notices, and nudges Keith’s face with his own, as if to ask why he’d refrained.

“But Shiro,” he says, a slight smile on his lips and voice pitched low so that only his person could hear him, “I don't need to make wishes anymore. Don't you know that all I ever wanted is right here in front of me?”

Shiro’s answering smile is all Keith needs, and no longer are the stars the only thing to feel like _home_.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, idk. Lemme know what you think by leaving a comment or come visit me on tumblr where I'm @damnspacebois.


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